Temporary
by Ripplestitchskein
Summary: Killian temporarily gives up his own life in a desperate attempt to bring back Emma's. He runs into someone he never expected to see again.


The bottle is bigger than he expected, slightly larger than his flask, sapphire blue and filled with thick black smoke. He can almost make out shapes within it, ever shifting forms that swirl against the blue glass, grim and foreboding. They slink and slide against the sides, creeping to the top, ebbing and flowing like the tide. It makes him sick and uncomfortable to watch them and so he looks away.

"Are you sure this will work?" Henry is asking uncertainly, his eyes locked on the bottle and the morphing smoke within it. "There isn't another way?" He appears so much older than he should in that moment, a face with the worries of a man, not the carefree expression of a thirteen year old boy, and Killian is sorry for it.

"It will most definitely do the job," the wizard's face is grim. "The rest of it though, I'm afraid that is up to the Captain and I can offer no guarantees." Both of them shift their gaze from the bottle. Killian swallows. "It is, however, the only way."

"Aye, it will work," he sends Henry a reassuring smile. "I'll get what she needs, lad."

"But, what if you don't-" Henry cuts the question off with a swallow, his face shifting again, and Killian is struck just as suddenly, by how young he looks, a little boy unsure of the future.

Killian is not sure which he prefers, too old or too young and he hopes that one day the boy can just be Henry, and he hopes, most of all, that he will be there to see it.

"But you'll be-" again Henry stops, unable to say the word.

"Dead. Aye, I'd prefer not to focus on that bit too much if it's all the same to you my boy," Killian sends him a smile. "But in my experience, death is usually temporary, I assure you."

"But what if it's not…temporary I mean. I can't-," Henry starts, collects himself, begins again, his eyes shining with anxious tears. "I can't lose you too."

Killian's heart freezes in his chest for a moment, those words so familiar echoing in his ears, his thoughts on who else is contained in the "too" this time: Emma, Neal, the boy's loathe some grandfather, Gold, and he very much hopes, not just for his own sake, that he won't be added to the list. If he fails Henry won't only lose him, but perhaps their only chance of getting Emma _back_.

"I'll return Henry," he reaches out, a heavy hand on his shoulder. "I'll bring it back and then we can help her." He turns his attention back to the wizard, holding up the bottle and giving it a shake, the smoke swirling even faster.

"Now, mate, how exactly do I go about drinking this stuff?"

Death feels a lot like going to sleep he thinks. His eyelids heavy, heart slowing in chest. Thick tendrils of the black smoke seep from his skin, swirling around his limbs, curl by his face, and cover his body in a thick blanket of cold vapor. He gives Henry one last, reassuring, sleepy, smile before his head falls to the side, onto the cushions of the cot, the tendrils of black mist curling out around his form, pulling in at center, and then with one last shuddering breath, blowing rapidly away.

He is gone.

Time doesn't move forward here so much as it weaves in and out, grows and shrinks, swirls and halts. So he's not quite sure how long he spends in that tremulous space between pleasure and reality, how long it takes him to remember and act.

The garden he finds himself in is beautiful and lush all around him, full of flowers and green leaves wet with moisture and shining in the brilliant sun. The air is thick and heavy, cocooning him in a constant blanket of warmth and comfort, it smells like the sea but looks like a tropical paradise.

Everything glows and dims, everything is pleasant and lovely, and he hovers in this liminal space of complete contentment and awareness for what feels like an eternity. He lies on plush cushions, drinks heady wines that burst fruity and rich on his tongue and seem to soothe his very soul from the depths upwards. He dozes dreamily, his movements slow and languid, his mind empty and clear, and he is content to just be, to just exist.

They had prepared for this possibility. That he would be lost, that he would forget, that he would get swept up in the afterlife, abandoning the present and by extension and his purpose. Merlin had mentioned it was likely, depending on what fate was chosen for him and how far he had come on his path, and warned that he could expect an eternity of extreme pleasure or one of extreme pain. Either way he would need to remember.

The tattoo on his arm, just above the space where a hand had once been (lost forever now, not even returned to him in death), is small and intricate, appropriately enough, an elegant swan. There had been no hesitation in the choosing.

It hadn't stung as much in the new realm as it would in his own, the whirring gun that anointed him with the enchanted ink was smooth and efficient, taking hours where previously it could take days. Nothing more than a pleasant burn beneath his skin and the pins and needles sensation of magic taking hold.

It takes him awhile to notice the mark, wrapped up as he is in the comforts of this place, but when he does, drawing his thumb across the ink as if to smudge it away, he _remembers_.

The thick, humid air, once so warm and comforting, is suddenly thick and stifling, clinging to his lungs with each useless breath and dotting his skin with unnecessary perspiration. The source-less light is too harsh on his eyes, the air too wet, and all he wants to do is go, to find what he needs and to get back. To her.

It's lonely here. Solitary. Where once he had reveled in the mindlessness of just existing now he realized the pain of being alone.

Paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be.

It takes him a few days to reach the gardens, made slower still by the need for stealth, but once he does he sees what he needs immediately.

Brilliant red flowers, glowing gold at the edges. Enchanted poppies, so rare in the Enchanted Forest, grow abundant under the careful ministrations of a goddess.

He steals what he can, a little bit each day, biding his time and grinding them between rocks until he has enough to suit his purpose.

It's easy after that. There are few guards in the castle of the dead. No one dares to breach its defenses lest they wind up held in its clutches, and therefore there is no need to protect its treasures.

The dust gets him where he needs to be, silently and without much effort, and the helm he steals, with the jewel he needs, is easy to get, and hopefully not readily missed.

That is the first task down.

The next proves harder still.

He waits on the shores of the river for what feels like a lifetime, watching the ferryman cross over and over with his cargo of the recently deceased.

He hears their mournful cries, their bargains and pleas, their gentle acceptances, and he covers his ears against the lot of them, cringing back from the din of sorrow. It is too much. But still he waits. That is not the ship he needs.

And then, just when he was close to giving up hope, he sees it.

What was once might a tall and proud vessel, carefully constructed, a thing of beauty, is charred black and sickly green, glowing with an otherworldly haze, seaweed and barnacles covering her hull and hanging from her masts. She creaks and groans her way up the river, to the shores of the dead with her cargo, and Killian runs to intercept her.

He is a pirate. Uniquely suited to the task of commandeering a ship, and it is without hesitation that he leaps from the river dock onto her deck once the last unnatural spirit has left the gangplank.

It is also without hesitation that he makes his way across the now empty ship to the Captain's quarters, his treasure clutched in his hand.

He is steadfast and sure, his movements deeply ingrained after hundreds of years at sea, of taking what he wants, stealing what he needs, and he had felt certain of no other part of their plan save this one.

And then he sees the Captain.

When he was a boy, a teenager, a newly made man, people told Killian Jones that he was the very picture of his father. The same sweeping black hair, the same intense blue eyes, the same strong, stubbled jaw. Everywhere he went, from port to port, from kingdom to kingdom, there were those who saw the image of his Papa in face and they didn't forget.

It was never a benefit. He ducked men's fists and used his own coin to pay his father's many debts, and blushed at whore's suggestions, and generally paid the never ending price of being his father's son.

Until Neverland. Until the centuries passed and no one still lived who remembered his father's face. The fists stopped coming, the debts were forgotten, and the whore's suggestions were purely for him alone.

It is that face, that forgotten face, that stands before him now, pausing in the Captain's quarter's, eyes so like his own, surprised but pleased to see him.

"Killian, my boy, is it really you?"

He is a shadow of the man Killian remembers. He glows faintly green like the ship, his eyes more white-gray than brilliant blue, he is otherworldly and somehow not as tangible as he should be, but he is there and he is whole, and he is his father.

"Papa?" Killian winces at how small his voice sounds, how weak. He is that boy again waking in the night from nightmares only to find that he hasn't woken at all, the nightmare has just begun.

He is a boy again tugging on Liam's shirt, asking when will Papa return, when will he come back, and will he having something for them to eat when he comes?

"I looked for you, after your brother…" his Papa swallows and looks away, out of the windows to the blackness beyond. "All the Jones boy's should go by sea and I figured I'd see you shortly after. But when I didn't I thought you'd bucked tradition and died on land. I worried I'd missed my chance."

"How are you here?" Killian swallows, his voice breaking, clutching the helm closer to his chest. "How are you on this ship?"

"Made a deal with a god," the man smiles without humor but offers no additional information. "How are _you_ here?"

"Made a deal with a sorcerer," Killian swallows, and the man laughs.

"I need this ship," Killian says. "I need to get back to Em-" he stops himself, looks around, takes another shuddering breath. "I need to get back to The Land Without Magic."

The walls feels like they are pressing in on him. Something in him is screaming to get away, to turn back, find another way, that this is wrong, but the other half of him, that little boy inside, is screaming that this is his father, his father is here, his father is back, and somehow, someway, after all these years they have finally found each other.

"Well then, son, let's make a deal," and his father flashes his teeth, an eyebrow raised in a way that is oh so familiar.

All Killian can hear is a hundred people saying "You look just like your father."

He sleeps fitfully on the ship in his father's bed. He dreams of Liam, of Henry, of Emma, and he cries out as his lungs fill with water and his heart lurches painfully against the walls of his chest. He can't breathe. It hurts. It burns.

When he wakes, gasping for breath on a completely silent and still ship, it is to the sight of his father closing a small chest across the room on his table, his father holding up a bottle of rum, his father smiling that same charming smile that has lured in so many.

They have a drink. Killian tells him of Liam. He tells him of Emma. He tells him of Henry and Storybrooke. All of it comes tumbling from his lips, and he can't stop telling, and his father just smiles and nods, offering him drink after drink until sleep claims him again.

His father in turn tells him of how he became the Captain of this ship, the deal he made with a God, and he smiles as he says "It's a gift really, eternal life."

Killian shrugs, murmurs something about immortality not being all it's cracked up to be, and his father laughs.

"You must love her very much," his father is saying from far away. "I'm sorry this had to happen to you, lad."

Killian wants to ask him which part, but he is asleep before the question can form.

When they arrive the Storybrooke harbor is not as deserted as he would have thought. The sorcerer waits there, with Henry and with….her.

He doesn't know how they knew to expect him, he assumes it is some magic he doesn't understand, he doesn't know how much time has passed since he left, but he smiles as the ship grows closer to the dock and he clutches his treasure in his hands.

The Helm of Darkness, imbued with the Phoenix Stone, as ordered, the one true treasure of the God of the Underworld, and the last piece of the puzzle to defeating the darkness and getting Emma back. He had won.

"Let me take that lad," his father gently pries it from his hand. He carries it easily with the small box of, presumably, his things, his eyes on the shore. "You'll want to give her a proper greeting I bet. I'm assuming that is your Emma? Your Swan?"

He motions to the small tattoo on his son's bare, and blunted wrist.

"Aye," Killian barely looks at his father, his eyes on her instead. She is withdrawn, closed off, wary on the dock, dressed from head to toe in sweeping black, her hair pearly white and pulled back into a severe bun, her lips blood red, but she is still Emma, and he has missed her terribly.

He doesn't know what Merlin said to get her here, only that she is here, that he has what she needs, and that this will all be over soon.

The ship steers itself, ropes unfurling on their own, inching across deck as the ship moans its way into place. He had wondered how she managed without a crew.

"Yes. That's my Swan."

His father is off the ship first, helm clutched in his hands, eager and practically bouncing with excitement.

"I'll take you to the Land Without Magic, just to touch the land again. Let me go to this Storybrooke you speak of, and spend a little time on her shores," his father had said and now he practically leaps off the ship to do just that. His boots thud on the wood of the dock, and he sucks in a lungful of crisp sea air, his smile huge.

Killian pauses for a moment at the head of the gangplank, taking her in. He gives his own smile, in relief, his shoulders drawing upward, the weight of the past however long lifting. The end is in sight now, she is here and he has what she needs, she'll be his again soon, she'll be free.

"The helm," Merlin is saying, reaching a hand out to his father. "If you please."

"Our deal, if you please?" the man replies mockingly, holding the helmet behind his back with one hand, reaching forward with the box in the other.

Killian's smile falters, his eyes darting from Emma to his father.

Merlin looks briefly at Killian, at Emma who regards the wizard with cold curiosity, and finally at Henry who looks at the sorcerer confused. He sighs and reluctantly takes the box from the man's grasp.

"So be it. I had hoped you would change your mind Captain," Merlin sighs, and from the box's depths he reaches in and withdraws a still beating heart, tinged black, and glowing dimly in his palm.

Henry gasps behind them and Emma continues to look on, cold and distant, but her brow is furrowed as she watches them warily.

"Why would I do that?" his father scoffs, dropping the helmet onto the dock with a sharp ping of metal on wood, Henry darts forward to snatch it up before it rolls into the water. "I'm giving him the gift of eternal life. He should be thankful." He reaches into the pocket of his coat, a long leather duster so like Killian's own, and pulls out another organ, this one brighter, glowing more intensely.

Killian feels a tingle in his chest as his father passes it to the wizard and he rubs the spot idly, but doesn't move, frozen by his confusion, by the growing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach.

Emma's mouth opens but she is still unmoving as the sorcerer places this new, brighter heart into the box, exchanging it for the dimmer one and closes the lid, snapping the latch close and setting it on the dock. He looks to the waiting man before him and sighs again.

"As you were thankful for that gift?" Merlin raises an eyebrow.

"A deal is a deal," he replies and opens his coat. "I'll take your part of it without additional commentary, wizard."

"So be it," Merlin shoves his arm forward.

His father grunts as it enters him, sucking in a lungful of air. He bends over, clutching his chest as he gasps over and over. And then, after a moment, he is rising slowly, a wicked smile pulling across his lips.

"Papa?" Killian steps forward, at the same time Emma whisper's a "No."

Killian's boot hits something solid and he looks down in confusion, his foot stopped by nothing but air, thick black smoke curling out from the toe where it strikes an invisible barrier. He steps forward again, frowning as his foot stops once more and again tendrils of smoke billow out. He kicks it harder.

"Papa," his voice is more urgent now, as Emma is stepping towards the man, her cold expression overcome by one of rage, her eyes flashing black. "Papa, what are you doing?"

"We had a deal lad," his father steps back from her.

"I said I'd take you to Storybrooke. That I'd give you the chance to see the land again," Killian can feel the panic and anger edging in his voice, and wonders how he didn't notice the missing thud of his heart against the cage of his ribs. Again.

"Exactly, and this is how I do that," he motions to the chest. "An even trade. A Jones for a Jones if you will. The terms of my agreement were quite clear, "Captain Jones shall ferry the dead of the sea for all of eternity", or something to that effect. I'm just sticking to the terms lad, or should I say, Captain Jones," as he speaks the ship begins to move, ropes swinging down, wrapping once, twice, three times around the box and it lifts onto the deck. "Liam wasn't suitable you see, his heart was poisoned, it wouldn't do at all." He shrugs at his son. "But I suppose you knew that already."

Killian kicks at the barrier again, his palm flat against the unseen force, striking out with his hand. With each strike smoke pours from the point of contact. The ship is groaning again, beginning to move backwards.

Emma steps towards his father, her palms out threateningly, but she stops turning towards the ship that is pulling it self away from the docks with ever increasing speed.

Killian looks at her, eyes wide and kicks at the barrier again as the gangplank falls away with a splash into the harbor.

Behind the vessel the ocean is starting to churn, heaving to and fro as it begins to spin, roaring louder and louder, swirling faster and faster, pulling the ship backwards towards it.

"Killian," Emma steps towards him, the rage on her face morphing into one of panic. "No! Killian!"

She is yelling now, black swirling magic leaving her fingertips, hovering just above the air around the ship. She screams in anger as the ship moans and creaks loudly, lurching into the harbor and towards the swirling whirlpool.

Killian beats at the barrier and then turns, running to the wheel that is spinning rapidly back and forth mid-deck. He tries to grab for it but it is moving too fast for him to catch with one hand, his hook gone, and he knows deep down that it's useless anyway.

The ship is moving faster towards the swirling water and his heart is in a box on the deck of the ship.

He returns to the side, his palm striking against the barrier again and again, desperately, his eyes locking on hers.

Henry is yelling too but Killian can't make out the words over the din and Emma is yelling his name, over and over, as she tries again and again to penetrate the barrier with those black ropes of her power.

Apparently The Dark One is no match for a God.

"Merlin, the last of it if you please!" his father is shouting looking to the wizard, who nods solemnly, apologetically, and waves a hand, a swirl of purple smoke beginning at the man's feet, traveling upwards.

And just before he goes his eyes lock with Killian's across the water, not a hint of remorse in their blue depths and Killian whispers "Papa." before the man is gone, again, disappeared, again, abandoning his son, again.

The ship gives a lurch, the bow tilting upwards and the last thing Killian sees before it falls into the gaping maw is Emma's stricken face, looking more like Emma than she has in months, and Henry clutching the key to his mother's salvation in his arms, yelling something at him over the noise.

And there is only one thing Killian Jones finds that he regrets in that moment, just before the ship descends into the blackness of the sea.

It's not risking his life to save the woman he loves, it's not the thought of eternity stretched out before him, ferrying the dead from here until the end of time, it's not even trusting his father after centuries of hurt and betrayal.

No, none of those.

It's that he couldn't keep his promise to Henry.

Apparently, Death wasn't as temporary as he thought.


End file.
